Working with Nori Roasted Seaweed for Making Sushi

Hi, this is Sushi Mark here. Today we’re going to be talking about Nori – or the roasted seaweed. This is a vital ingredient when you are talking about making sushi for hand rolls and for American style sushi rolls. And it is a very delicate ingredient to work with and I want to share some of the tips and tricks that I’ve learned along the way so you can easily work with it and improve your sushi making skills.

So, here we have a piece of the Nori Roasted Seaweed itself. You see it’s paper-thin; it’s about 7 inches by 8 inches and in order to do half a roll – which is a California roll; a couple of ingredients – you just fold it in half and here you have half a sheet, perfect for a California roll with just three ingredients, maybe just a crab stick, some cream cheese or a spicy crab roll. For some of the bigger rolls, you need to use 3/4s of a sheet. I just pinch this off but this is for a bigger roll; my shrimp tempura rolls, my green dragon rolls, spider rolls, a lot of the other rolls get this size of a sheet.

When you go to buy Nori Roasted Seaweed, it comes in 10 packs or in larger 50 packs. I always recommend that you get the 10 pack, even if you are making a lot of sushi. If you have a big pack of 50 and it’s stale, all will be stale. There is a huge difference between Nori Roasted Seaweed that is fresh; it crumples. This is still fresh and this is the sound that you want – it’s very brittle. This has a beautiful…well, it tastes like seaweed! It has a nice, toasted taste to it and I enjoy it all by myself.

Working with Roasted Seaweed (Nori) for Making Sushi

Let’s talk about price. For the 10 sheet package, I paid about $2 at the local Asian market. You can get it online; you can get it from my website, of course, at mysushidaddy.com. This is about $2. Everyone has started carrying this. Your wholesalers will have them; grocery stores have started carrying them too. You might pay a little bit more because it is a specialty item in some of these stores but if you order it online, you’ll be good to go as well. $2 for the smaller item and for the larger 50 pack, I paid about $7. Like I said, unless you’re making a ton of sushi, 50 sheets is a lot; that is a lot of sushi. I always recommend to go with the 10 sheet and you can get that online or on my website at mysushidaddy.com.

I take this zip lock back. If I’m using it right away, I’ll skip this step, but if I’m not using it right away I’ll put it in another plastic bag; just another layer of protection because it does have a limited shelf life. You’re going to store this for a couple of weeks or a month or so, but I normally go buy it fresh every time I make sushi just to make sure that I have fresh Nori. Each of these packages help to prevent moisture getting in there from the air, there’s a silicon pack and that helps to keep the moisture away from seaweed, because moisture will ruin the seaweed.

I keep it away from water when I’m making sushi. I’ll take one piece out at a time; never take the whole stack out and put it on the table. It’s more time consuming but it protects the Nori Roasted Seaweed so you don’t get any water on there. Your hands will be wet when dealing with the rice.

Seaweed does have two sides. You can have a shiny side and more of a flat side. It really depends on the type of roll you’re making. Normally it doesn’t matter if you have the rice on the outside of the roll but if you’re going to have the rice on the inside, you want the shiny side out so it looks really nice. The rice will stick to either side without difficulty; I haven’t found a difference.

If you’ve enjoyed these tips and tricks on how to use Nori Roasted Seaweed
, you can visit my website, mysushidaddy.com, to buy it through Amazon. I am an affiliate; I do earn a commission. And I thank you for supporting my sushi site and above all, I hope you enjoy making your sushi. Thank you for watching.